If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I tested the 2.6.38-rc1 kernel with a mesa snapshot, and snapshot of the xf86-video-ati drivers on a ATI Radeon X800XL and the performance for the gallium is about half of what the gallium performance for the X1800XT card. Essentially the card performs according to what I would expect for its class. I did enjoy the performance boost because from the 2.6.37 kernel and the mesa-7.10 the performance in some tasks doubled. For all tasks the performance has increased substantially having the page-flip. Nexius doesn't render correctly though and there are other regressions and so I'll wait until mesa-7.11 is released.

Got a chance to test it a bit yesterday evening. Wow, is all I can write. This 200M isnīt very fast, so any boost in performance is rather noticeable. I could play some games okayishly and even some WINE was acceptable, but now with the new kernel and the latest driver packages from xorg-edgers I can play just as well as I could under Windows. Temple of Elemental Evil with WINE was so-so before on a small 800x600 window, but now I can play it with respectable performance at my screenīs native 1280x768. Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is also fast, though I now get weird graphical glitches. One thing that is bothering me considerably is artifacts all over my standard 2D desktop. Turning on composition makes them go away, but that isnīt really a viable work-around for me.

I think the performance of r300g may go even higher. There are still some optimizations to be done that should further improve it, like:
- Some state tracker optimizations to make the game Torcs faster. (being worked on)
- Rewriting register allocation in the compiler for it to work with flow control. I am sure this will speed up Lightsmark. (not started)
- Finishing up Hyper-Z support, which is fast Z clear + Zbuffer compression + hierarchical Zbuffering. I am sure this will speed up openarena. (mostly done)

More WOW

Originally Posted by Melcar

Got a chance to test it a bit yesterday evening. Wow, is all I can write. This 200M isnīt very fast, so any boost in performance is rather noticeable. I could play some games okayishly and even some WINE was acceptable, but now with the new kernel and the latest driver packages from xorg-edgers I can play just as well as I could under Windows. Temple of Elemental Evil with WINE was so-so before on a small 800x600 window, but now I can play it with respectable performance at my screenīs native 1280x768. Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is also fast, though I now get weird graphical glitches. One thing that is bothering me considerably is artifacts all over my standard 2D desktop. Turning on composition makes them go away, but that isnīt really a viable work-around for me.

I hadn't seen your post until now (24 January 2010 about 0136 EST), but except for the hardware specifics, I have nothing but praise for the latest kernel and latest X/Mesa as things stand; and I'm NOT running (K)Ubuntu, for once.

2.6.38-rc2 supports kernel-modesetting for *all* graphics hardware by default (no change from 2.6.37; however, a major change from 2.6.36 and earlier, which still lacked KMS for newer AMD GPUs).

Latest X/Mesa (7.6 of X.org and 7.10 of Mesa) *does* implement the new DRI2 for AMD HD5xxx and earlier GPU hardware.

One area that I have had decided issues with (due largely to lack of hardware acceleration) when it comes to FOSS has to do with (quite naturally) Flash performance in Web browsers in general, and in Firefox in particular. Let's face facts - when it comes to the Web, it pretty much runs on Flash. While Flash itself is supported pretty good on FOSS, without hardware acceleration, Flash performance on FOSS bites, and bites badly. However, with the new TCL DRI2 support present and accounted for, not only has Flash performance improved, it is now *at least* the equal of Flash performance in Firefox for Windows (if not better in some cases, due to differences in browser implementation between Firefox on Linux and Firefox on Windows).

That's right - even on wimpy hardware, Flash performance no longer need bite.

I think the performance of r300g may go even higher. There are still some optimizations to be done that should further improve it, like:
- Some state tracker optimizations to make the game Torcs faster. (being worked on)
- Rewriting register allocation in the compiler for it to work with flow control. I am sure this will speed up Lightsmark. (not started)
- Finishing up Hyper-Z support, which is fast Z clear + Zbuffer compression + hierarchical Zbuffering. I am sure this will speed up openarena. (mostly done)

Thanks Marek, you are really doing a great work on fixing and improving the r300g driver and mesa

It's looking like 300g is going to eventually outperform the proprietary driver. Can 600g do the same before...say 900g is needed and support for the new graphics cards are dropped in the new versions of the proprietary drivers?